Post modern science – my opinion is as good as yours – with no reference to evidence.

Carter showed seven major “black swans” of evidence invalidating the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis (CAGW)
A major battle is against the emotionalism based “precautionary principle” which is meaningless as devoid of evidence or quantitatively verifiable prediction.
e.g. no scientist can reliably predict what the weather (or climate) will be in 2020, particularly whether it will be warmer or cooler, nor by how much.

Sorry, the feed is so bad I will have to wait for the YouTube versions.
I hope they will be posted as soon as possible.
From what I could pick between the lengthy silent gaps it seems there is a LOT to hear.

Really enjoyed Bob Carter’s talk. The torpedoes have been replaced with black swans, but the message the same: that the CAGW hypothesis is bollocks. There is no tropospheric hotspot. The earth is always both warming and cooling depending on what timeframe you’re using. Never mind causation, there ain’t even correlation between rising CO2 and temperature. He also mentioned a proxy which uses leaves (or pine needles possibly?) whose abundance on the tree inversely correlates with CO2 levels (more CO2 = less leaves), hence are an excellent proxy for historical CO2 – all very interesting stuff.

Dellingpole’s talk was disappointing for me – I was a bit embarrassed for him at times, he didn’t articulate well, and spent too much time going for cheap laughs, but there you go.

I watched what I could on Thursday though it was very intermittent service. I would like an answer to a simple question if anyone cares to explain. The point about settled science around CO2 was presented and then argued about but transmission broke during the debate. What was really the debating point, and what really is settled? For that matter, when everyone refers to the “settled science” what exactly is the science they are refering to?

Talks were great today. Carter and Soon were excellent. Denning went mental. he was quiet, articulate and sensible yesterday, today he screamed about when are we going to wake up and save the world. Comical and indicative of the desperation. Yet hats off to him for having the fortitude to engage.

the chat at the feed was invaded by a couple of trolls. one was particularly misinformed and apparently ill-educated to the point he abused me because i would not accept his assertion that CO2 is a pollutant and then was more offended and accused me of ‘taking the easy way out’ after reminding him of the null hypothesis and burden of proof.
There was some good engagement overall and can’t wait for the video to be available at the heartland institute for dissemination later.

Thanks again to the Heartland Institute for pulling out the stops by upgrading their livestream account, their tech and their hotel bandwidth to bring the 300 or so of us watching the feeds today a much happier experience than yesterday. It can’t have been cheap and I’ll be putting a little something in the post for them this week.

And of course thanks to Anthony for keeping us up to date with this and for attending. I’m sure there is much of interest yet to be written.

The following remarks reference the argument that was made by Scott Denning in the second of his two presentations. Denning makes the same argument, but more succinctly, at http://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/3608845/4 . His argument is that if the atmospheric CO2 concentation were to double from preindustrial levels, “…4 watts of heat would shine down on every square meter of the planet: that’s the equivalent of a tiny night-light bulb that burns 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.” Denning might have added the qualifier “ceteris paribus” (other things being equal) but didn’t. Are other things equal?

From the phenomenology of free convection heat transfer and Woods’ experiments on agricultural greenhouses we know that other things generally are not equal for if the downward pointing radiative heat flux increases from the increase in the CO2 concentration, the resultant heating of tropospheric air causes the rate of decline of the atmospheric temperature with altitude to exceed the adiabatic lapse rate; a consequence is for less buoyant air to overlie more buoyant air.

When in this state, the atmosphere is unstable with the consequence that the more buoyant air rises and the less buoyant air falls until the adiabatic lapse rate is restored. By this mechanism, a feedback control mechanism is set up by which any increase in the magnitude of the downward pointing radiative heat flux from CO2 emissions is balanced by an equal increase in the magnitude of the upward pointing free convective heat flux with the consequence of maintenance of the lapse rate at the set point of the adiabatic lapse rate. Woods’ experiments establish that it is by stifling the free convection heat transfer that the glass of an agricultural greenhouse heats Earth’s surface. In an agricultural greenhouse, ceteris paribus is a true proposition. Without the glass, ceteris paribus is a false proposition. This false proposition is a premise to Denning’s argument. That this premise is false shows Denning’s conjecture about the “4 watts of heat” to be unproved.

You should have introduced yourself. Ric Werme and I were both there and Anthony made sure to introduce us. I was really hoping to meet more WUWT denizens there…. not that meeting Ric wasn’t an immense pleasure all by itself!